


all my sins remembered

by thefudge



Category: Luke Cage (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, i suck at patois, tiny bit of smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-05 13:17:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15171545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge
Summary: 2x11. Once she gets to know him, she cannot turn back. Tilda/John





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> haha, aren't i predictable??? (also, don't judge me. it's 5 am. the next two installments will be longer/include smut). and yes, the title is a line from hamlet.

 

He can't let himself sleep, because if he closes his eyes, he will be back at the fruit stand and he will feel the first bullets piercing his belly and he will feel hunger. He will want to damage something in his vicinity. He chases away the nightmare. 

Tilda hears him stir. 

"What...time...is it?" he asks hoarsely.

"Don't worry about that. It's late. You should rest...get some sleep." Her voice comes out a little watery. She's not crying, but she's always on the verge of tears around him. Can taste them on her tongue. It's not even sorrow, not even pity. It's despair at her own helplessness, her inability to stop her family from doing awful things. The rebellion against her own blood. 

Johnnie (because she thinks of him as John when he's half-naked and she's still got his blood on her collarbone) waves his hand dismissively. His lips curve into a trifling smile. He rises precariously from the bed, body careening dangerously towards the floor.

Tilda quickly intercepts him. He's going to open up his bandages. 

She grabs him by the waist and holds him up with her body.

His skin has cooled; his fresh bruises graze her bare arm. The sensation is like suffering little cuts. 

He is not yet himself, still wrapped up in memories that manifest like tumors inside of him.

He wants to push her away, wants to be untouchable, but he has no strength. And she is warm. He remembers the feel of her soft, untried palm on his chest. 

She helped him, despite her rotten Stokes blood. He doesn't know how to catalog her yet, though he recognizes a quality in her, the adaptability of the child. She has been betrayed by the elders too. 

Tilda settles him down on the bed again, but she sits with him. 

"You need rest."

"Mi need nothing. Nothing need mi," he replies feverishly, staring up at her with pulsations of hatred and kindness.  The mixture startles her, how easily such opposites commingle. 

"You may be special, but you're not invincible," she tells him, pulling the covers over him gently. 

His deft fingers slip past the sheets. They reach out towards her and almost touch her cheek. He's strong enough to touch her, but he doesn't. He stops right on the threshold. 

He clenches his fingers at the base of her throat, gesturing abstract violence. 

"Not about victory, see? Justice is de answer. I could squeeze yu throat dry."

Tilda leans forward imperceptibly. "I - I wouldn't blame you. What they did to you...I kind of deserve it."  

She offers her throat like a question mark, but she knows deep down that he has no intention of strangling her. Not only is he not strong enough, but his eyes tell a different story. Those troubling green eyes, they resemble the moss beds on ancient tombs. She could lose herself in that cemetery. 

Johnnie shakes his head wearily. 

"You're de only one who doesn't." 

Tilda bites her lip. Being singled out like that makes her feel light-headed and guilty. "You don't know me. You don't know my thoughts. Sometimes I just wanna hurt her. Ma. I want to make her bleed as bad as you do. I'm not a good person."

Johnnie laughs, a sound unlike anything 'Bushmaster'. Young and foolish, a sound of reckless joy. But maybe that is the Bushmaster too. 

"Onlee good people say dat."

Tilda frowns, feeling both flattered and annoyed. "You still don't know anything about me."

"I could." 

And that's the only thing he says as his green eyes peel back the layers of her fractured countenance. She wants to turn her head away.

She already feels he knows too much. 

Tilda rises abruptly and feels the remnant of his fingers on her wrist. He's a charmer, even when he's half-conscious.

He doesn't try to get out of bed anymore. He doesn't coax her to stay, but she does anyway. She has to monitor the counter-effects of the nightshade. She feels responsible for him. 

This is her family's legacy, this stolen life. 

She doesn't realize she is in danger of giving her life in exchange for his. She doesn't realize he would take it, he'd feast on it, make her a slave, make her a queen, give her everything and nothing. They are both children of hope. They yearn for the imaginary country of the past. 

He closes his eyes, pretending sleep to humor her. He does not see the fruit stand, he does not feel the bullets. He is distracted by her presence. She does not have her hateful mother's face, but she has her beauty. 

Tilda smiles down at him, a liquid smile full of uncertainties. She has no idea what to think of him, how to relate to him. She just knows that she _will_ keep thinking of him, and she will keep relating. She cannot turn back. 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

The next day he feels better. And the day after that too. His body regenerates so quickly, it makes her want to study him, pick him apart, find out what magic is stored inside his bones. She watches him from afar, careful not to seem too intrusive. She doesn’t want him to feel like an experiment, although perhaps the true experiment here is her. 

She has no idea what she is going to accomplish in the end by helping him, she just knows she must carry on.  Perhaps that is magic too. 

She doesn’t notice him watching her too. 

 

 

John walks out of the shower one afternoon, towel wrapped negligently around his slim waist, hips swaying gracefully for her benefit, and she feels her heart speeding up like a drum.

“Come, little Nurse,” he teases with a half-smile. “Let’s chat awhile.” 

His wounds are still craters etched across his skin but they do not seem to bother him. He wears them as well as his tattoos. 

Tilda wishes he’d put on a shirt, but John does not feel the need to cover himself. He leans against one of the tall windows that give him a bird’s eye-view of the city and he scratches the center of his forehead, as if he were trying to solve a riddle. 

Tilda approaches him warily. 

“Are you okay?”

“You keep asking.”

“Doctor’s habit,” she shrugs. 

“No. You’re afraid,” he drawls. “You checking to see if me going to go berserk.” 

Tilda licks her lips. “I have a tranquilizer in my pocket, just in case.”

He scans her quickly, almost apprehensively, a muscle flinching at the ridge between his shoulders, but her eyes twinkle with mischief and Bushmaster cracks a smile too. 

“That was a bad joke,” she admits bashfully. 

“I’ve heard worse. Tell me, who take care of you all these years? Because it wasn’t your moma.”

Tilda is caught off guard. He manages to do that with just a few words.

“She, uh, kept in touch, made sure I didn’t fall off the face of the Earth. But it was my Mamie who raised me. After she died, I was alone.”

John nods as if he already knew. 

“Self-reliance, yeah?  What about your daddy?”

Tilda stiffens before the word is out of his mouth. Her tongue is made of lead. She drags it across her teeth.

“He, uh….”

“One of dem dirty Stokes, no?”

“Yeah.” Her throat feels dry. She looks out the window. She wants to heave. The world trapped behind the glass is spinning too fast. Where are all the cars going? What about the people? Why are they rushing? Do they know she is watching them?

When her mother told her, she didn’t want to believe it, but every day the truth sinks its claws in her deeper.

Suddenly, there are warm fingers under her chin, tilting her head up. 

John’s face swims before her eyes. His brow is crinkled. 

“Speak.”

Tilda’s jaw trembles. “Peter Stokes. They called him Pistol Pete, even though he was gun-shy. He was Buggy’s brother and my momma’s great-uncle. He raped her and - and then she had me. That’s why my mother never really wanted me around.” 

The words are easier to get out than she thought. It’s the silence after that hurts the most.

Bushmaster appraises her with a different light in his eyes. And she hates it. She doesn’t want his condescending pity. She  _ knows  _ she was born an abomination, she doesn’t need confirmation.

Tilda turns to move away, but John seizes her by the arm. It’s no gentle grip, but she could probably wrench away if she wanted to. He stares down at her. 

“I shouldn’t have said you have Stokes blood in your veins.” 

That’s all he says. He doesn’t offer souvenirs of sympathy. He does not console. He simply erases the blood inside her veins. Tilda wants to cry and thank him, but she also wants to snarl at him for making her tragedy about his vendetta. But don’t we all do the same thing? Don’t we take our histories and weave them together in a desperate attempt to find meaning? 

She suddenly feels a devilish itch under her tongue. “You know you’re living on credit, don’t you? The nightshade is poisoning your internal organs. Your spleen, your liver...it’s all shutting down.” 

“That’s the cost of living,” he says without a twinge. “But my credit’s good, yeah?” 

Tilda can’t help but smile, even though her tears threaten to spill again. He is such a strange, tender monster. She doesn’t want him to die. One of them should survive all of this. It’s only fair.

  
  


 

She has shut her phone off and made sure she cannot be reached by Mariah, but she lies in bed every night expecting the suite’s doors to crash open and hired guns to sweep Bushmaster’s home clean. 

Would they shoot her down too? She can’t be sure. All she knows is that she is on the right side of the fence for once. She won’t make her mother’s mistakes. It's true, she doesn't know all of them, so maybe she's bound to repeat a few. But she'll draw the line somewhere.  Mariah is insatiable. Tilda would be happy with just a slice. 

The door to her room slides open and she almost reaches for the weapon she doesn’t have. John walks up to the bed with heavy steps and throws a hoodie at her.

“Get dressed. You’re coming with us.”

Tilda stares up at him apprehensively. His face looks  _ shattered _ . Broken from the inside. His eyes are the color of the sea after a storm. The calm of a wreck. 

She doesn’t put up much of a fight. 

 

 

When she slips through the cordoned door at  _ Gwen’s _ , the first thing she has to do is cover her nose and mouth.  The stench of decaying carnage is overbearing. It makes her want to kneel and throw up. The smell of blood is not just pervasive, it is almost an  _ accusation _ . Someone else, someone without the Dillard and the Stokes in her family tree, would look away. But she doesn’t. Bushmaster doesn’t want her to shy away from it. She stares at the disfigured corpses until her eyes turn glassy. 

And she knows this is her mother. Without pause, without surprise. Her Lady Macbeth signature is writ large over the whole thing. She likes to take the enemy and scorch him until not even the shadow remains.

John and Sheldon stand a few feet apart and mourn in a silence broken only by aggrieved moans. 

Tilda expects to see rage in their eyes, but they have no wish for revenge in this moment. They simply grieve for what can never return. A good family. Unlike hers. 

“I’m - I’m so sorry…” she mouths in quiet self-remonstrance. Could she have stopped this?

Sheldon’s eyes are stark as he surveys her coldly.  “Save your breath. You want to run back to your savage mother.”

“I don’t -”

“Let her do it,” John tells him in a faint voice. “Let her go.” 

“But -” Sheldon protests.

“The girl has seen the dead. It’s enough.” His eyes bore into hers without any trace of resentment. But there is no compassion there either. No humor.  A dead man gazing back at her. 

Tilda shivers. 

“I said go,” he says more gruffly and nudges his head towards the door. "Get out."

Tilda falls back, feeling like a coward. “I’m so sorry.”

She side-steps the cordon and rushes into the night’s cold embrace. 

 

 

It is close to dawn and he lies on his side, running absent fingers over his wounds and watching the faint sheen of the rising sun bathe the city blue. He wants to plunge his thumb inside his flesh, wants to see the depth it will reach. He wants not to know what sorrow is, but he was born in it, he was fed on it and now he sleeps in it too. 

He closes his eyes. Darkness is no good. 

He doesn’t hear it at first. The soft foreign movement. But he catches the familiar scent of lavender. She smells like her shop. A lost haven. 

John lifts himself from the couch with a groan. 

Tilda stands in the doorway looking like a lost orphan. Which she is, in a way. There is exhaustion in her features, as if she’s walked all night, thinking about the same thing over and over again. She has.

“There’s nowhere else for me to go,” she tells him quietly, almost guiltily. 

“This is not a home,” he says, as if claiming the territory, as if claiming the opposite thing. This is the  _ only  _ home, after all.

“I know, but I need it anyway. I think I need you too. Or you need me. Or…” she trails off, shifting from one leg to the other. She clears her throat. “My place is here.”

John grips the couch’s edge until his knuckles turn a lustrous shade of white. He could tear it apart.  _ I think I need you too _ . He can hear the funereal bells tolling in the old belfry back home. The church was called  _ Our Lady of Perpetual Help _ and until today, he had never really understood the name.

“You are a Duppy,” he tells her after a long silence. “Spirit trapped between two worlds, yeah?”

She shrugs, lifting her shoulders in resignation. “I’m okay with that. I prefer it to Dillard or Johnson or Stokes.” 

“Be careful. Losing yur name, even a bad one, is a dangerous thing.” 

Tilda folds her arms around herself. “Then name me. Find me a better name.”

And the thought runs heavy and cold through him, like uncut river stones. In a different world where the Stokes had not torn his family apart, him and Tilda would have been nudged together. The descendants, the carriers of legacy. Their mommas would have arranged the marriage while they were still in their nappies. She would have been Tilda McIver by now. 

Maybe she really is a witch doctor, because her face tells him the same story. She is thinking of the same thing.

And since they are both deliberating in thought, should their bodies be apart?

He lifts himself off the couch with such force it slides away from him. 

The air shimmers with the first gold of the sun. He goes to her. Tilda watches him come, inexorable like time. She opens her arms and is pushed up against the mahogany door. Rough and sweet and just like home. 

Already he is slipping his hands under her shirt, feeling the fever under her skin. Her own hands come up to his face and trace his large jaw. They touch each other like children who were separated at birth. He kisses her once almost chastely, tasting her lips. He pauses, stares at her with the knowledge that he won’t stop and that she won’t let him stop. When their lips meet again, there is only stolen breath. Her spine cracks against the wood. He bites her chin, she scratches the back of his neck with bitten down nails. She is his enemy’s daughter, the offspring of evil. And he is her mother’s executioner, the purveyor of bloody justice. They are two sides of the scale and they tip over together.

She wraps her legs around him and wriggles out of her jeans. He cups her ass and drags her underwear out of the way.  She wants to be a pendant around his neck. He wants to chain himself to the hollow between her collarbones. 

Tilda moans against his mouth. His fingers dive deep and prepare her for the waves of his hunger. 

 

_ Fuck, she tastes too good _ , he thinks  with chagrin as the sun rises over the city and pours honey over her skin. 

 

  
(how do you chase away a Duppy? you have to lick a spoonful of salt.

so he breaks her arteries with his teeth and he salts his tongue on her. her body arches, her heavy breasts grind against his wounds, making him wish he was cut open too. when she whispers " _please_ " in his ear, he goes to lick the spoonful between her legs)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More emotional smut following next chapter! And...other emotionally compromising things. BECAUSE THESE TWO.  
> (also thank you for all the encouragement! if any luke cage writers/producers are reading this, what are yall waiting for???)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Call Me By Your Name](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15702078) by [trololonasty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trololonasty/pseuds/trololonasty)




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